Chapter 3
Chapter 3
S ound asleep, Gideon resembled a ragamuffin angel, Jack reflected, with both sadness and love, as he stood beside his son’s bed, full of silent wonder. And he was still scrambled emotionally.
In the week since Loreen had literally dumped their son at Jack’s feet, he’d done his level best to keep things on an honest, healthy course, but it hadn’t been easy.
Not that he’d expected it to be, but he hadn’t quite anticipated the degree of difficulty, either.
Leaving the unfinished room in the new part of the house—like the rest of the space, it was under renovation—Jack found his dog waiting patiently at the end of the hallway. It was getting dark, but Trey was always up for exploring the property, and Jack himself felt the need of fresh air and open spaces.
“Let’s go,” he said, with deep affection, bending to ruffle Trey’s floppy ears.
Trey gave a yip of good-natured enthusiasm and scrabbled at the door with one paw.
Jack chuckled. “Right,” he muttered, moving in that direction and not bothering with the seldom-used leash. Trey never wandered so far that a shrill whistle wouldn’t bring him bounding back to Jack’s side in moments. “Come on, then. We’ll head down to the creek for a few minutes, your favorite place to hang out.”
Trey padded happily along behind as they left the house.
In the backyard, which, like most of the property, was covered with construction materials, equipment, and the three small house trailers that, combined, served as a temporary bunkhouse arrangement for Tom and the other ranch hands, Jack drew in a deep, restorative breath.
Tom Winter Moon’s mother, Sadie, who lived in town but visited the ranch a lot, was sitting in a lawn chair in front of her son’s trailer, smoking a cigarette.
“You going off someplace and leaving that boy all alone?” she asked, without preamble. Sadie had a few rough edges but, basically, she was a good person.
“He’s asleep,” Jack answered, slowing his pace. Smiling and patting his shirt pocket. “Anyway, I bought him a phone, and if he needs me, all he has to do is call or text, and I’ll be with him in a flash. He knows that.”
Sadie shook her head. “You do remember that his mom used to go off and leave him all by himself for days at a time, right?”
Inwardly, Jack bristled a little, though his smile held. Trey, already at the edge of the old orchard, stopped and lifted his hind leg alongside the gnarled trunk of an apple tree. “Yes, Sadie,” Jack said patiently, “I’m well aware of that. It’s one of the many reasons why he’s living with me now.”
“What if he wakes up and you’re nowhere around?”
Jack sighed. “He’ll be fine, Sadie. He’s twelve years old, not two. And, yes, he’s got a lot of problems, thanks to Loreen, but he’s also pretty self-reliant. That’s a trait I want to encourage.”
Sadie tossed her cigarette down and ground it out with the heel of her thick-soled shoe. “That’s all well and good, but he’s still a kid—an insecure kid.”
Before Jack could frame an answer to that, his friend and foreman, Tom, stuck his head out the trailer door and said, “Mom. Rein it in, will you? Jack knows what he’s doing.”
At that, Sadie subsided, but by the way she tilted her head toward the main house, Jack knew she would be right there, watching and listening for trouble until he got back.
That was fine with him.
Beside the creek, which flowed just on the other side of the neglected orchard, the fish were jumping at mosquitoes and other flying insects, and the closer he came to the water, the more he had to slap at his bare forearms and his neck.
Trey, covered in fur, was, of course, impervious to mosquito bites. He sniffed the ground, checking the premises for unauthorized visitors, like squirrels and field mice, and when a crow landed in one of the nearby cottonwood trees and squawked a complaint, he barked.
Between sudden fatherhood and all the work of restoring the ranch to its former glory, Jack had been busy—too busy. He had a semitruck load of cattle arriving in the next few days—the first of several—and he needed to hire more help.
On top of all that, there was the upcoming party.
He’d probably jumped the gun, setting that big of an event in motion when so many other things were going on, but getting to know the locals was part of his plan to leave the financial rat race behind and establish an authentic, boots-on-the-ground life—or better yet, a boots-in-the-stirrups life—for himself, and now, of course, for Gideon, too.
Ready to return to the house, shower, and make it an early night, he whistled for Trey and headed in that direction. Obediently, the dog bounded along behind him.
Trey was getting up there in years, but he was still spry.
As he made his way through the deep grass and underbrush, Jack decided he’d bring the boy down to the creek when time allowed, so they could do some fishing.
That had been one of the ways Jack had bonded with his own father, while he was growing up. An only child, Jack had lost his mother to pneumonia when he was seven, and after that, it had been him and his dad against the world.
For all that he’d missed having a mom, like most of the kids he knew, Jack had been raised in a loving home. Andrew O’Ballivan, his dad, now gone, had seen to that.
They had gone fishing together. Built furniture in the well-equipped basement of the family home. Taken road trips, stopping at every weird roadside attraction along the way.
S EE THE T WO -H EADED C OW , 50 C ENTS ! W ORLD’S L ONGEST S NAKE , $1.00!
There had been dozens of them, each one a scam, each one fun simply because he and his dad were checking it out together.
I miss you, Dad, he thought. And I want to be the same kind of father to Gideon that you were to me.
If he never accomplished anything else, Jack was determined to raise his son to be strong, honest, secure in his own skin, able to cope with whatever came his way.
Of course, given the damage Loreen and her boyfriends had done to the boy, bringing him up was bound to be a major challenge.
He and Gideon were already in counseling—Jack had made that a priority, and they’d already had two intense sessions—but that was only the bare beginning of all that needed to be done.
Gideon didn’t seem to mind being alone at times, but he had the inevitable abandonment issues. He’d been yanked out of school so many times, whenever Loreen decided to hit the road again, that he’d probably be in special-education classes when school started.
By his own admission, Gideon had never had friends, and it was easy to figure out why: he’d never lived in one place long enough to make any. That, along with the constant uncertainty and upheaval, meant he’d never developed social skills appropriate to his age and, according to the therapist, he might even be on the autism spectrum, though he was clearly high-functioning.
Whatever other struggles he might be dealing with, Gideon was smart. Very smart.
Approaching the house through the gathering dusk, Jack saw that every light in the place was on.
Sadie was no longer sitting in her lawn chair, keeping her vigil. No doubt, the mosquitoes had driven her back inside the trailer, despite her best intentions.
Jack quickened his step a little, opened the back door, and found Gideon sitting glumly at the kitchen table.
Like the other rooms in the house, it was a bare-bones space, with a plain wooden floor and drywall on all sides.
“Where did you go, Jack?” the boy asked.
“That’s ‘Dad’ to you, buddy,” Jack replied, though gently. He approached the table and sat down next to his son. “What’s up?”
Sadie’s concerns came to mind, and he felt a pang of guilt. He’d been so sure Gideon would be okay on his own, but here the kid was, out of bed, pale and wide-eyed, with the house lit up like a jack-o’-lantern.
“I needed a drink of water,” the boy said, in a strangely detached tone of voice. “So I got up and I came out here to the kitchen, because I don’t like to drink bathroom water, and you weren’t here. You weren’t anywhere. And Trey was gone, too.”
At the mention of his name, and perhaps because he sensed Gideon’s mood, Trey moved close to the boy’s chair and laid his muzzle on his lap.
Distractedly, Gideon stroked the dog’s head.
“I told you things would be different with me,” Jack reminded the child gently. “I’m not going to leave you. Not ever.”
“Mom used to say that, too,” Gideon pointed out. “Then she’d disappear. Once, when she took off with one of her boyfriends, I didn’t have anything to eat but dry cereal for a whole week.”
“I’m not your mom, Gideon.”
The boy’s expression was a little obstinate, and under other circumstances, that would have amused Jack, because it was like looking into his own much younger face. “Where did you go?” he asked.
“Just down to the creek.” Jack indicated the direction with a motion of his thumb. “No farther than that.”
In that moment, he wished Gideon was small enough to hold on his lap, but he knew any such move would be a mistake, because being touched was another of the boy’s issues. As far as the therapist had been able to discern, Gideon had never been molested, but he had been jerked around, slapped, and shaken, possibly from infancy.
God only knew how deeply he’d been scarred.
“I guess you wouldn’t go off and leave this ranch and all the cattle and horses and everything.”
“I wouldn’t go off and leave you, Gideon. You’re more important to me than any of those things.”
Gideon looked hopeful and skeptical, both at once. His blue eyes were huge in his small, freckled face. “Where were you, though? Why did you leave me with her?”
“We’ve been over this, son. Your mother was expecting you when we split up, but she never told me. I had no idea you existed until the day she brought you here.”
“You don’t have a wife,” the boy reasoned. “You don’t have any other kids. So maybe you didn’t want a family. Maybe you’re just being nice and you don’t want me, either.”
“I don’t have a wife, or other kids, because I never met the right woman.”
“I can help you find a wife—how about Harper Quinn?” Gideon surmised solemnly, looking more like a little college professor than the scrawny preteen boy he was. “She’s pretty, and she’s nice.”
“Whoa,” Jack said, with a chuckle. “Ms. Quinn is pretty, and she’s nice, too, it would seem. But we hardly know her. For all we can tell, she already has a man in her life, or doesn’t want one.”
Gideon shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because she’s lonely. And she’s sad about something. Really sad.”
We’re all sad about something, Jack reflected, with a silent sigh.
“Maybe, maybe not,” he said aloud.
“You just have to look in her eyes,” Gideon persisted. “You’ll see.”
“That’s kind of a stretch, isn’t it? Reading somebody’s feelings just by looking?”
“No, it isn’t a stretch. I’m an expert.”
Jack suppressed a startled chuckle that might have morphed into a guffaw. “Is that so?”
“I told you. I can tell what people are like by looking in their eyes.”
“Okay,” Jack said, folding his arms on the tabletop and leaning in a little, while keeping his eyes wide open. “What am I like?”
Gideon studied him very seriously. “You’re strong,” he concluded, after some moments had gone by. “And you like being who you are.”
“You mean to say I’m conceited?” Jack was teasing, but Gideon’s expression didn’t change. If anything, it was more speculative than ever.
“No. If you were somebody else, instead of you, and you met the person you are now, you’d be friends with him.”
Jack paused to take that in. It made his head spin a little, to tell the truth.
“Want to know what I see when I look into your eyes?” he countered, when he found the words.
Gideon frowned. “What?” he asked.
Jack made a show of looking.
“I see a good kid,” he said, at last. “A kid who’s been through some rough stuff, but still cares about people. And dogs.”
“How do you know I’m like that?” Gideon wanted to know. He’d brightened a little, though, as if pleased by Jack’s assessment of his character.
“By the way you treat Trey, for one thing,” Jack replied, with quiet conviction. “You’re probably pretty angry at the whole world, deep down inside, because of the way you’ve been treated, and that turns some people mean. But not you.”
Gideon looked down. “I think I’m a mess.”
Jack reached over, gave the boy’s shoulder a brief squeeze. “That’s not what I see when I look at you,” he said and, once again, the backs of his eyes burned something fierce. “When I look at you, Gideon O’Ballivan, I see somebody special. Somebody good and strong and smart.”
Gideon blinked then, and his eyes glistened. “My last name is O’Ballivan? Just like yours?”
The appropriate paperwork had already been filed.
“Of course it is,” Jack answered, his voice so hoarse he had to clear his throat before he could go on. “You’re my son.”
He hadn’t needed a DNA test to know this was true.
Gideon was, as Jack’s dad would have said, the spitting image.
Gideon sat up a little straighter. “What does that mean, to be an O’Ballivan?”
“It means you come from a long line of good, sturdy, strong-minded people,” Jack replied. “And it means I love you.”
A silence fell between them then, heavy but not sad.
When he’d recovered a little, Jack went on. “Let me tell you about your great-great-great grandfather, Sam O’Ballivan. There might be a few other greats in there, because old Sam lived way back in the nineteenth century. He was a genuine hero, an Arizona Ranger—”